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Spook Central

A thread for posting weird coincidences, hauntings, deja vu and anything else that gives you the heebie jeebies.

Today I received a pack of 3 Bosch automotive engineering books. The newest one was from 1939. The top right corner of the first page has been ripped off (probably because it had a Wehrmacht / Nazi stamp). I was going though it and found a bookmark. The original user had used a calendar page. Matching the calendar days up, it was for August 22, 1941. The books were listed on August 16, 2017.

So lets look at those dates.

August 22
German forces close in on Leningrad; the citizens continue improvising fortifications.
German forces occupied Cherkasy.
The Communist Law was passed in Nazi-occupied Denmark, banning the Communist Party of Denmark and other communist organizations.
A German order signed by Otto von Stülpnagel decreed that in response to the previous day's assassination of a member of the German Armed Forces, all Frenchmen detained by or on behalf of German authorities would be considered as hostages. If any further incident occurred, a number of these hostages were to be shot.
Joseph Stalin decreed that every Soviet soldier should receive 100 grams of vodka per day.
Born: Bill Parcells, American football coach, in Englewood, New Jersey
Died: Adna R. Chaffee, Jr., 56, American major general

August 16
The Germans occupied the important Soviet naval base at Mykolaiv and captured warships, ammunition and repair facilities.
The Defense Base Act was enacted in the United States.
German submarine U-135 was commissioned.

Sept 3
Murder of all 3,700 residents of the old Jewish quarter in Vilnius begins at the Ponary death site along with 10 members of the Judenrat. First written testimony of occurrences at Ponary by a survivor.
Vilna Ghetto Jews required to hand over any gold or silver
German heavy artillery began shelling Leningrad.
Operation Gauntlet ended in Allied success.
Zyklon B was used experimentally at Auschwitz concentration camp, gassing 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick Polish prisoners. The experiment was deemed a success.
German submarine U-702 was commissioned.

And today
Georgy Zhukov arrived in Leningrad to replace Kliment Voroshilov as the commanding officer of the city's garrison.
XXIV Panzer Corps took Lokhvytsia.
Norwegian passenger ship Barøy was sunk in the Vestfjord by a Fairey Albacore of 817 Squadron, Royal Australian Navy.

Anyway, interesting that those sat for almost 76 years, almost to the day.

freaks me the fuck out! A really awesome 3-part episode on the podcast Unexplained covered it. (episodes are pretty short, like 20 mins each.) I was listening to the story in the middle of the day and was FREAKED! OUT!

freaks me the fuck out! A really awesome 3-part episode on the podcast Unexplained covered it. (episodes are pretty short, like 20 mins each.) I was listening to the story in the middle of the day and was FREAKED! OUT!

"I heard a rumor about a TV show. A popular afternoon show. Supposedly there are days when the host does not utter a word for the entire duration of the show. How does he manage to fill an hour time slot like this? Does the show conclude peacefully? Miraculously, I was able to videotape one such incident. Let's inspect it now."

These are the words that lead in to the strangest thing I have ever discovered in media. Evidence of an early 2000s Japanese subculture of shut-in video graffiti artists, illegally hiding their art in commercial VHS rental tapes and returning them to the store, to be discovered and hopefully to plant the idea in the minds other would-be pirate artists.

Discovered on a Japanese VHS rental tape of "Surf Ninjas" purchased from Amoeba Records in San Francisco, a pirate video has been mysteriously dubbed onto the tape to hijack the main feature! Created by a man known only as KK, the video appears to recontextualize a Japanese daytime TV show called "Waratte itomon" aka "Go Ahead And Laugh". A version of this film was the recipient of the Kirin Art Award, which was subsequently retracted because of copyright violation. Happily for U.S. viewers, the material has been subtitled in English.

Interestingly, the video contains instructions for renting VHS tapes and dubbing pirate material over them. Other viewers apparently dubbed their own material on to the tape, inspired by this instruction! A DVD of "Leprechaun 3", some modem sounds, and 40 minutes of Super Mario Bros. gameplay recorded off of a Nintendo Famicom are video graffiti tagged on top of KK's feature.

So what happened to K.K.? After his video was disqualified from the Kirin Art Award, he apparently made a second version of the film which rotoscoped out all the recognizable elements and ended with a monitor being smashed with a sledgehammer, followed by the words 'I heard a rumor about a TV show.' I can find no further information about K.K., his true identity, or current whereabouts. Maybe he's still out there, maybe this is all that remains. Let's find out.

(--thanks Sats and Bbobb!)

///Timeline Bookmarks///8:30 - end of Surf Ninjas Footage 8:44 - video cuts to static 9:35 - "Ghost Tape" beings, city street footage 9:39 - Cut to blue description screen, several title cards describing the nature of the video quickly flash by on a loop9:53 - city street footage, "An incident one December. By K.K." title, beginning of the "WARATTE IITOMO" film10:30 - "I heard a rumor about a TV show..." 11:09 - "Monday - A Miracle" 14:30 - "h e l l o. w h o a r e y o u?" , record15:28 - DVD Menu Interruption*, DOOM Generation, SNL, Trimark Home Video, video static, Modem Noises, Leprachaun 3 DVD Menu (*I believe this is from another person or persons 'playing along' with the video tagging fad and not the original artist)16:10 -cuts back to WARATTE IITOMO," Censorship System"16:47 -"A video according to K.K.", "Burroughs.AIFF" plays (**I can't decipher what the audio is saying here)17:14 - K.K.'s apartment, endless stacks of tapes, zoom in on TV screen18:07 - "Tuesday. KURODA Clan" - A strange biography program of WARATTE IITOMO host Tamori25:14 - "SEX ,DRUG & Rock 'N Roll" - an AMAZING video puppet show from hell, starring host Tamori 28:55 - The origin of host Tamori's sunglasses, which is interrupted by 9/11 WTC footage and a program note about it. "Now! Moving on."30:27 - jumping monitor, "indeed-! ...indeed-! ...indeed-!"33:39 - footage of K.K. in his apartment, in a field, and a parking lot, having an edited conversation with Tamori 37:04 - instructions for making a GHOST TAPE, in which K.K. defaces a copy of Max Max 2: The Road Warrior and records his own material onto the tape before returning it to the store.38:01 - The video abruptly cuts to someone playing SUPER MARIO BROS. on a Famicom. Badly. Until the end of the video.

So yeah, Yeller found that video and we've been doing some detective work on it. It's very, very, very strange and interesting. The person (KK) who is responsible for the bulk of the footage is a very mysterious filmmaker who won a prestigious award for this piece. However, it only showed in a handful of galleries in Japan and NYC, it was by no means an easily attainable film. So, how did it get on this VHS? Was KK responsible for it? Did he tape his work over a copy of Surf Ninjas secretly, to release into the public? And how did it get to CA??!?!??!! and why is the Mario player so bad??????